Author: Stuart Woolf

1Night and Day

By Virginia Woolf

Night and Day (1919) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. Set in Edwardian London, Night and Day contrasts the daily lives of two friends, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet. The novel examines the relationships between love, marriage, happiness, and success. (Wikipedia)

2Voyage Out

By Virginia Woolf

The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Woolf's wittiest social satires.<br><br>Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. Dalloway.<br><br>E. M. Forster described it as "... a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis... It is absolutely unafraid... Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path." (Introduction from Wikipedia)

3Jacob's Room

By Virginia Woolf

The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob [except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective]. Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms. Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel. (Introduction by Wikipedia)

4Monday or Tuesday

By Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> (1925), <i>To the Lighthouse</i> (1927), and <i>Orlando</i> (1928), and the book-length essay <i>A Room of One's Own</i> (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."<br /><br />The slim book <i>Monday or Tuesday</i> offers an excursion into Virginia Woolf's early excursions in "stream of consciousness" writing she was to become famous for; including her so-termed "Moments of being," in a format of a collection of short stories mainly concerned with people's thoughts as well as psychology in general, the human and particularly female condition, and aesthetics which inspired and engaged her much of the time helping other writers to find publication through her and her husband Leonard Woolf's "Hogarth Press." (Summary from Wikipedia and LizMourant)

5Jacob's Room (version 2)

By Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf’s third novel lacks a conventional narrative style and some say even a plot. It follows Jacob from his childhood, through his education at Cambridge and finally to his death in World War I. The prose repeatedly shifts its point of view and the reader is challenged to find connections between the narrative fragments. Largely from the comments of others we come to know the sequence and some moments of Jacob’s life but we never fully learn who Jacob is. The literary experimentation in Jacob’s Room is used even more successfully in Woolf’s later novels. (Summary by DaveC)

6Voyage Out (Version 2)

By Virginia Woolf

Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirise Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modelled after important figures in Woolf's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell.[7] Rachel's journey from a cloistered life in a London suburb to freedom, challenging intellectual discourse and discovery very likely reflects Woolf's own journey from a repressive household to the intellectual stimulation of the Bloomsbury Group.

7Village in the Jungle

By Leonard Woolf

Woolf wrote this novel based on his experience as a government agent for British imperialist-controlled Ceylon in the early part of the twentieth-century. He focuses his story on one poor family in a jungle village as they struggle to survive, not just faced with a very harsh environment but with their own human prejudices, superstitions, jealousies, violence, ignorance, and greed. In the background is the other enemy: the foreign government that controls them but does not really understand or care for these uncivilized, not really human beings. It was an important work because its point of view was sympathetically a native one. JL

"Mrs. Dalloway" recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in the middle of June 1923. Clarissa Dalloway is a high society London lady. On that day, she is hosting a party, meeting people, going to the park, and reflecting on her choices. Where would she have been if she married Peter Walsh and not Richard Dalloway? What if she would not invite this or that person to her party? Her feelings about Peter Walsh grow because on that particular day he returns from India to settle some affairs in London. Other people also reflect on their choices. Mr. Smith who cannot move on from the horrors he saw in battle, his Italian born wife, members of Clarissa's family and friends.<br> This book is considered a classic. It appears on many lists of best novels including the 100 best novels list by the Guardian. Indeed, some of the them are timeless and touch all of us. - Summary by Stav Nisser.

Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Join her and a web of connections in exploring London, their memories and their innermost thoughts and feelings. This novel explores relationships, mental health, nostalgia, regret, and the multitude of reasons for which people make decisions which change the course of their life. (Summary by Hannah Dormor)

10Common Reader

By Virginia Woolf

A collection of essays by Virginia Woolf, some of which originally appeared in the Times Literary Supplement or the Dial, and others were originally published for the first time in this volume. <br><br> "Anything that Virginia Woolf may have to say about letters is of more than ordinary interest, for her peculiar intelligence and informed attitude set her somewhat apart. She possesses the happy faculty simultaneously of enjoying and accepting the work of Daniel De Foe and James Joyce, of Joseph Addison and T.S. Eliot, of Jane Austen and Marcel Proust. Many of these essays are excellent examples of that type of writing which reveals the reactions, nuances, twisting and adventuring threads of thought and surmise which spring from the perusal and spiritual acquisition of other work."<br> Excerpts from the New York Times Book Review of The Common Reader, May 31, 1925

In three parts, this modern classic explores the life of an English family, the Ramsays, at their Scottish summer house both before and after The Great War. Difficult to categorize and including elements of feminist and psychological literature as well as stream of consciousness, Woolf's novel reads, at times, almost like a prose poem. At its heart, it examines what it means to be a woman and an artist at the start of the 20th century. (Summary by WendyKatzHiller)

Virginia Woolf's classic modernist novel explores the lives and thoughts of the Ramsays and their guests at the family's summer home on the Isle of Skye. The book is divided into three parts, described by Woolf as 'two blocks joined by a corridor'. The first and last parts tell of two days, ten years, and a world war apart. The 'corridor' describes the decay and renovation of the house over the intervening period, punctuated by marriages and deaths among the Ramsays and their friends. To the Lighthouse remains noteworthy for its use of multiple perspectives to reveal complexities of perception and experience. It can be enjoyed both for Woolf's vivid portraits of character and relationship and for its insights into the philosophy of writing and visual art. This reading is based on the British edition of the book, which varies in parts from the American edition that was published in the same year. (Summary by Phil Benson)

The Ramsey family, with house guests, visit the Isle of Skye at least twice. The plot is not at all the point though, as this is a book about how people think and feel and relate. There’s insight into the world of childhood thought and emotion, and a variety of views of adult cares and perceptions. <br><br> I hope this doesn’t make it sound ‘difficult’, it doesn’t need to be – just let the sentences flow and make your own sense of the words. It’s perhaps as close as a novel can come to the highly individual experience of looking at a painting. … - Summary by Cori Samuel <br><br> This recording was originally published on Legamus.eu and was later released on Librivox when US copyright permitted.

A fictional biography following the adventures of Orlando: initially a gentleman, later a lady — always a poet — who romps through British history, living an unusually long and full life…. (summary by Cori) <br><br> This recording was originally published on Legamus.eu and was later released on Librivox when US copyright permitted.

Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking satire of British culture, customs, literature, philosophy, and politics from the Elizabethan era to the author's present-day 1928, as experienced by her famously long-lived and genderfluid protagonist. - Summary by Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Virginia Woolf's most successful novel recounts the extraordinary biography of Orlando from his youth in the reign of Elizabeth I to her life as a successful author and mother in 1928, the year of the book's publication. Over the 350 years of his/her life, Orlando loves and is betrayed by a Russian princess, serves as British ambassador to Constantinople, changes sex, lives among gypsies, narrowly escapes marriage to the Archduchess Harriet/Archduke Harry, enjoys the society of Addison, Dryden and Pope, and finally marries Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmardine with whom she has a child. Over the same 350 years, Orlando struggles with her love of writing, finally publishing her poem 'The Oak Tree', begun in the 1500s, in the 1920s. Along the way, Orlando and her biographer spend much time and energy pondering on the craft of writing and the differences between the sexes. Woolf's mock biography, complete with scholarly preface and index, was loosely based on the family history of Vita Sackville-West, her country house in Kent, and her poem 'The Land'. The book is divided into six long chapters, which I have divided into shorter scenes for this audiobook. I have given each scene a descriptive title, but listeners should note that these titles do not appear in Woolf's text, nor did she give any indication of divisions within the chapters. (Summary by Phil Benson)

This feminist essay argues for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy. First published on 24 October 1929, the extended essay was based on a series of lectures delivered by Virginia Woolf at Cambridge University in October 1928. While it employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled “Women and Fiction”, and hence the essay, are non-fiction. - Summary by Cori Samuel This recording was originally published on Legamus.eu and was later released on Librivox when US copyright permitted.